Comic Con 1992: Green Jellö

The San Diego Comic Con costs money, you know. These days, I get in free as a professional, but there was a time when I was always on the lookout for a free way in. In 1992, my friend Rufus and I helped out with the Steve Jackson Games booth. "Helping out" turns out to be code for "standing in the booth for twelve hours, six days in a row."

If you've been paying attention, you may now be wondering about the "six days" part, because Comic Con is only four days. It turns out, though, if you're one of the in crowd, you get to go to the two days of "Expo", which is exhibitor-and-professional-only.

Being at the Expo had its good and bad points. The bad point was the two days of standing there in the Steve Jackson Games booth. The good part was schmoozing for free stuff. It turns out that everyone with a booth is trying to keep from bringing too much stuff back with them. And they're interested in the stuffin the other booths. So after six solid days of being next to each other, people tend to trade merchandise back and forth. Which means free stuff. Yeah.

So you've got the basic picture: me, a friend, and a Steve Jackson Games employee, staffing the booth for six days. There we are. Now, turn around and look at the booth directly across the aisle from us. For no apparent reason, a rock band has decided to debut their video at Comic Con.

That band was Green Jellö. They were a really odd band that made huge costumes out of sofa cushions and sang songs about the Cowgod. They had an extremely minor hit with their "Three Little Pigs", which had an animated video. MTV usually cut the punch line off the end: a caption that said "And the moral of the story is that bands with no talent can easily amuse idiots with a stupid puppet show". They weren't very good, but they had a sense of humor. Plus, they had songs which clearly ripped off the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Trippin on XTC") and Metallica ("Electric Harley House (of Love").

They had a videotape, which contained videos for each of the songs on their album, which wasn't out yet. And they played that videotape over. And over. And, I have to make sure you understand me fully, over. For all six days. By the end of the show, Rufus and I had all the songs etched into our brains.

We got autographed videotapes, and that was pretty much it. We stayed "fans", even to the point of going to a Green Jelly show in Los Angeles. They'd had to change their name, because General Foods, the makers of Jell-O, sued. There was a second album, which bit. One of the drummers, Jimmy Anderson, joined the Muffs. The other drummer, Danny Carey, ended up in Tool, which just goes to show that you can never tell.

Green Jellö; weren't the only "celebrities" I met at the 1992 Comic Con. One row over, Mojo Nixon was promoting his new comic book, which he vowed would kick the ass of the New Kids on the Block comic book. And may I just add that, if you ain't got Mojo Nixon, your store could indeed use some fixin'. Down another aisle, Mr. T was promoting something or other. I never got a clear idea what it was, but he was very insistent that "Mr. T's doin' it for the kids!"

I got a picture with Mr. T (oh, like you wouldn't), but I can't find it right now. It's probably for the best.